It takes a parrot with personality to run the roost!

[Jcnbarb4RN]

I thought I'd be the first to post an article here! A friend sent me this story when she learned we were considering adopting 2 parakeets! I thought you guys would enjoy as much as I did!

It takes a parrot with personality to run the roost

This article is from the Hope Mills newspaper "the sandspur" -
http://www.sandspuronline.com/article?id=245272

By Lisa Carter Waring

Mildred is in rare form this morning. To tell you the truth, she is getting on my nerves.

She has reminded me to take out the trash five or six times. She has asked me what I am doing eight times in a row. I just ignore her.

Next she gets angry and turns her attention to the dog. “Hey Mousie! Come here!” Mousie ignores her. She gives an ear-piercing whistle. “Mousie! Come here!” she demands again. This time Mousie reluctantly obeys and walks across the room to look at her. Mildred scolds, “You are a bad dog! A bad, bad dog!” Mousie puts her tiny head down and returns in shame to her little bed.

At the top of her lungs, Mildred begins to whistle the theme song from “The Andy Griffith Show.” This goes on until I can stand it no longer. From the chair in my office I finally yell “Mildred, hush!” “Mildred, hush!” she yells back, and then erupts into a roar of laughter that sounds exactly like my husband. This causes me to burst out laughing.

Mildred is our 8-year-old African gray parrot. I named her after my eighth-grade math teacher, Miss Mildred Crawley. Everything in our home basically revolves around Mildred. Mildred rules the roost.

Yes, she can be aggravating at times, but we still love her. She adds so much pleasure to our lives simply by being around. We don’t have to go out on the town or to the movies to be entertained. We have Mildred.

“Guess what Mildred just told me?” my husband will ask. “You won’t believe what I heard Mildred say,” I will tell my husband. Sometimes I call him at work just to recount Mildred’s latest antics.

Mildred and my husband share the den. Her cage is strategically placed in front of a large window so she can keep an eye on what is going on in the front yard while still being able to see the television.

A small birdfeeder hangs in a tree right outside her window so she can have conversations with her little bird friends. Perched in her cage, Mildred whistles loudly to let us know when someone pulls in the driveway and barks like a dog when they get out of their car. We consider her our personal Feathered First Alert System, and she never hesitates to call the dogs if she needs back up.

Over the years, Mildred seems to have developed her own personal fan club. People actually come to our house to visit Mildred, not us.

She loves to watch “The Price is Right” and screams with delight when someone wins a prize. She yells, “Swing batter, batter, batter!” when she and my husband are engrossed in an Atlanta Braves game and exclaims “Merry Christmas! Ho! Ho! Ho!” when someone plugs in the Christmas tree.

She loves to imitate the ring of the phone to see if she can fool us into running to answer it. When the phone actually does ring, she immediately answers with “Hello? Okay, Bye!” Mildred can sing opera, but not very well. And of course, she knows a few words we wish she didn’t know.

Even though I raised Mildred from a chick, she is now my husband’s bird. When my husband leaves to go to work each morning, he rings a brass bell that hangs on the wall by the door. Mildred rings the bell in her cage in response. Before he closes the door, he tells her he loves her and she tells him she loves him back.

I tell my husband I never imagined that he, the epitome of the Southern sportsman, could ever get so attached to a bird. He tells me that he never imagined a bird could be so intelligent and have such personality. Yes, our lives are definitely richer for having Miss Mildred around the house.

Lisa Carter Waring is a retired educator in Cumberland County and the president of Friends of Hope Mills Lake Inc

Barb